Legless Blog - Ian Reed / John McMiken
Legless blog archive for October 2007
For my current Blog click here!
British expat amputee in Thailand
'Let it be'
Legless Blog -I first decided to create this blog page after seeing all of the bad publicity given to and constant hounding of my fellow legless celebrity, Heather Mills on many other websites and in the media in general. This page I have created as a place where I can state my personal opinions, thoughts and musings openly, and share my views and feelings with the Internet World.
This is my legless website, I pay for it and I am the manager, owner/boss/king of it, so 'legless or not', as 'freedom of speech' is still a basic human right in true democratic countries where you can view this blog, then I feel that this is somewhere that I can speak my mind without recourse. This is not a commercial page, it is just my own social media page. Nobody has forced any of you to come here and nobody is holding you here, so if you don't agree or like what you are reading here, then please feel free to leave at anytime!
As someone who has exactly the same physical injuries that I have, I find that the hounding of Heather Mills by the media is disgusting. I now see how celebrities, legless or not, can never have a normal life, because they never have time to themselves without someone from the media trying to drag up any kind of dirt from what would just be a normal everyday incident to anyone else, but in Heather's case any normal incident gets sensationalised by the media. Heather's physical disability seems to incite them more, and being honest, if I personally was hounded the way that Heather is, then some of these media personnel would consider being just 'legless' a bonus after the physical injuries that I would personally inflict upon them. I am thoroughly disgusted at the treatment of Heather, I suppose you could call it a feeling of 'Legless unity', so if any of the media responsible are reading this blog, then in Paul McCartney's own words "Let it be".
We are both legless!
****
You can email me anytime at: blog@leglessinthailand.com
'The Legless Blog' October 2007
I was quite pleased with how quickly the search engines picked up this new blog and it soon appeared on the first results pages on most search engines for the obvious keywords of 'Legless blog', for these words it soon reached the number one spot on Google. I went on to check other keywords and the results were still very good, that was yesterday!
Today I went through my usual routine of checking my blog with the search engines and was quite surprised when I couldn't find this blog on many of them, even though I was highly ranked on the first results page on all of them yesterday. Looking into this more carefully now, the search engines that did not display this page, were all search engines that were fed by Google. So then I went directly to Google search and it looks just like this page never existed on there, it hasn't just dropped down in ranking, this blog page has totally disappeared from Google altogether for any keywords. So the only conclusions that I can come up with about this are that either:
(a) Google has a problem with their cached memory.
(b) My blog has suddenly become 'persona non grata!'
(c) It is just 'Halloween magic!'
(d) ?????????
Which do you think it is?
I hope this is rectified soon.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
I realised that I would have to tighten the bolt on the foot to correct this problem, but living in complete disarray at the moment, I did not know where my tools were kept, so I asked my living partner if she could get my tools for me from wherever she had put them and explained about the problem with my prosthesis, she said that they were on a shelf about four metres away and that she would get them for me in the morning. So the next morning I woke up, put my prosthesis on and went to the bathroom, when I returned the foot had twisted through 90 degrees again and I had to sit down quickly again. My partner was not there and even though I now knew where the tools were kept, I could not walk to get them, the floor where I stay is bare concrete and it is rough, cracked and has holes, so for me to crawl on my hands and knees to get the tools, would cause problems to my knees. So I decided to wait until my partner returned. When she returned I asked her for the tools to repair my leg, she said that she was sorry because she forgot to get them for me in the morning, to which I replied "Never mind, please just get them for me now", at this reply she got mad and she said "I am busy at the moment, I have a lot of things to do, I told you where your tools are, why don't you just go and get them yourself?" At this completely uncaring and lack of understanding retort, I just lifted my stump up in the air and she walked to the shelves got my tools and threw them down beside me and then stormed off muttering under her breath. The whole process of her getting the tools for me took less than one minute and once I had the tools, I had my prosthesis repaired in less than five minutes.
This incident is just one of many, where non-amputees just don't understand about situations from the amputee's point of view. I read in some of Heather's allegations against Paul, that similar things had happened to her and I believe it and I can really relate to her about this.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
I am still not exactly sure what blogging is supposed to be all about. I first started blogging for another website about six months ago and I just started writing about my life in Thailand and took it from there. I don't know if people are interested in what I am writing about, so at the moment I just use my own blog, this one, to write about the things that I am thinking about and that interest me.
As I have stated in my previous postings, I only started this 'Legless Blog' because of what I considered to be an all-out attack on Heather Mills by the media and other websites and I felt it to be totally unwarranted and unfair and I needed somewhere to state my own views on this. Now I am also using this blog as an outlet for myself, maybe people will read it and maybe they will be interested in what I am writing about, maybe not, but it is somewhere for me to write down what interests me now and to recall some of the things that have happened in the past. I don't know if this is what blogging was supposed to be about, I just write whatever comes into my head at the time.
As a writer now, I have also written some short true stories which are basically about unusual incidents that have happened to me in the past and there is a link to them at the bottom of this page if anyone is interested.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
Before I lost my own leg, I had heard about this from other people too, but it was only when I did lose my leg that I really understood exactly what it felt like. To my body now, I still feel that I have a lower left leg and foot, even though I know that they are not there, the feelings from them are still there. This you get used to after a while, but the thing that you never quite get used to are the occasional pains from the missing parts and sometimes I get a feeling of cramp in my non-existent left foot, but these pains for me, are very few and far between.
The thing that does drive me crazy though, is the phantom itch that I get from the missing parts and this happens quite frequently to me. I will suddenly get a very strong feeling of itchiness in my left foot and it drives me crazy because I cannot just ignore it, even though I know that my foot doesn't really exist, the feeling becomes totally distracting, even when I am in company. I try to be logical about it, I know that it must be coming from the nerves near the amputation scar, so if I can, I quickly discard my prosthesis and start massaging my stump and eventually the feeling does recede, but it can take a very long time and sometimes it can run into a couple of hours for me. If I am working on my computer, in company, or doing something else important, then I just have to grit my teeth and try to bare it. I now look upon this as the amputee's curse.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
The comments made by people about this post, 98% were scathing against Heather Mills, so the media are doing a very good brainwashing job on the public here. In the post, Heather was talking about just having had a revisionary operation on her leg and afterwards how she could not use her prosthesis for a while and having to crawl about on her hands and knees. This I know is true, because I had the very same operation and had to do the same as her for a long time. Some of the comments on this post were saying: "She is obviously a lying B****, she is just after Paul's money" and then going on to say that: "nobody has to crawl around, even if you do only have one leg, you can just as easily hop, so Heather is obviously lying here as she is with everything else about Paul". Where do these idiots get their ideas from? They obviously do not have any idea what it is like to be an amputee and yet they spout away on these comments like they are the world's experts on this condition.
Again, I feel so sorry for Heather after seeing reactions like this from the general public, how must she feel reading these comments, when like me, as a fellow amputee she knows the truth? I have had many cuts and grazes on my knees caused by crawling around, especially here where I am and the floor is just bare rough cement with cracks and holes.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
26 Oct., 2007: Home on the farm
As I mentioned yesterday, I now live on a farm, I came to live on the farm here in Northern Central Thailand, in April 2007 and moved here from Bangkok. Why I moved here, was for many reasons. Firstly, on the small medical pension that I live on now, Bangkok was getting a little too expensive for me. Where I live now, the people let me stay here free of any accommodation rental charges, I just pay for the electricity that I use and telephone bill for the internet connection. Secondly, I don't really like large cities anyway, I much prefer the countryside to live in.
The last reason, is because when I visited this farm before I moved to live here, I found it a very relaxing place to stay, which is exactly what I need to finish writing my second book. I just hope that my first book 'Legless in Thailand' starts to sell well for me soon, because I definitely need some extra cash now. Although it is cheaper for me to stay here in the countryside, the nearest town is three kilometres away and I have no transport and only one real leg, so I usually have to ask the people that I stay with, to buy me provisions and other things that I need.
I really do miss being able to get around as and when I want, not having a car now, in Bangkok it was no problem with the skytrain and MRT systems, I could get around quite easily. I did have a car before, but I had to sell it a few years ago when my funds were at an all-time low. So I hope that the marketing work that I am doing with my websites on the internet now, will increase the chances of selling my book for Xmas and New Year, and hopefully make enough for me to put a deposit on a new car, then I can get mobile again.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
25 Oct., 2007: Happy Legless Xmas and New Year!
Sitting here at my computer this evening and reading over my legless blog, I suddenly realised that in everything that I have written in this blog so far, I seem to be complaining all the time. I started by complaining about the treatment of Heather Mills and then went on to complain about my book publisher, so I think it is time to change the mood a little on here now.
I was just thinking about Xmas and New Year and how quickly it seems to be almost upon us again. I can't really remember if I celebrated Xmas and New Year last year, I was so involved with the publication of my book at the time, that everything now just seems like a blur. I shall certainly try and make up for it this year though, but this year it is my first Xmas living on a farm, the nearest town is three kilometres away and there are no bars near here. There is a large open-air, Korean style, cook-at-the-table restaurant nearby that has some live music though, so I think I shall plan to spend a few evenings in there over Xmas and New Year.
I shall have to get some whisky in soon, normally I usually only drink a few beers in the evening and never touch spirits, but whisky always reminds me of Xmas when my parents were alive, they always used to ply me with whisky over the Xmas holidays and just the smell of whisky now brings those happy times back to me. So this Xmas I plan to get legless in more ways than one.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
24 Oct., 2007: Legless in Thailand - Publishing my book - continued!
Now I have to wait until January 2008, which is the next time in my contract that my publisher will give me an update on my book sales.
Reflecting on this publishing game, I have to ask myself "What was the $299 for?". I supplied the publisher with the completed manuscript in PDF format which they required, I also supplied them with a synopsis of the book, I chose the typeset font and I chose one of their standard covers which they keep on their computer anyway. The publisher does no marketing other than making a sales webpage for your book, they print one copy of your book to send to you for proof reading and they don't print any more until they get orders paid for, print on demand, so what was that $299 for? The only things that I have to show for the money I gave them, is my one printed copy of my book, an ISBN number and a sales webpage.
On top of all this, if someone does purchase my book, the publisher gets 80% of the purchase price immediately and I only receive 20% of the purchase price from each copy that they inform me that they have sold, two times per year.
When I finished wriing my first book two years ago, I immediately had an idea for a second book 'Ex Post Facto' which I started writing and completed about 80% of it before I started the publishing of 'Legless in Thailand' I thought that I could complete my second book when I had more time to relax and was already receiving an extra income from my first book, well 16 months after signing a publishing contract for my first book, I am still waiting to receive the first penny from all of my work, so my second book has been placed on hold for now.
Luckily, out of all of this I have been approached by a second publisher who wants to publish 'Ex Post Facto' and they even do their own marketing, because they are part of the Amazon group, so maybe I shall have a better book publishing story to write about in the future.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
23 Oct., 2007: Legless in Thailand - Publishing my book - continued!
So I started serious search engine optimization (SEO) for my website, I have a book now and somewhere for people to purchase it, so now I have to market it. Because of the title of my book, the first keywords that I concentrated on were the words 'Legless' & 'Thailand' and relatively quickly I had a situation were these two words used in any major search engine brought my website up number one on the first search results page. But I now had to think laterally, okay I now have the name of my book covered, but what about the people that do not know the name of my book, but are still looking for a new book on the internet? So I started doing SEO for many keywords that I thought would be related and I regularly update my websites for these words. This turned into a full time job and after six months of this work and no contact from my publisher, I needed to know if all my work was having an affect on my book sales.
So I sent an email to my publisher asking them what kind of turnover I was having on my book sales. I was surprised that they didn't contact me automatically, say once per month, to give me feedback on this, because I needed to know how effective my marketing campaign was going. I was very surprised with the reply I got from the publisher, they just quoted the contract and said that they were only under obligation to give me a statement of my account twice per year and that I would receive my first statement the following month, July 2007. So I replied to them saying that I did not want a statement of account, I just needed some feedback about sales to see if my marketing was working effectively, to which they replied, that they were not under obligation to give out this information to me, so better I just wait until I receive my official statement of account. I couldn't believe this, the communication through email was to someone who had the title of 'production coordinator' so why doesn't she coordinate? The next problem was that my statement of account never arrived, but this time when I complained, they told me by email that the sales of my book was zero, no sales.
How can I check if they are telling me the truth? The only information I ever receive is through this 'production coordinator' and that is not very often, only when they have some promotion that they want me to pay for. They may have truthfully sold no books or they may have sold a million, I have no way of checking. So this is the position that I am in today, I still do my daily SEO for my websites out of habit now, but I do not know if my book is selling, because the potential customers/readers do not buy from me direct, they buy directly from the publisher's website via a link on my websites.
Still more on this tomorrow.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
22 Oct., 2007: Legless in Thailand - Publishing my book - continued!
I read my contract with the publisher very carefully and then replied to them by email, telling them that I did not owe them any more money and that their statement of account was wrong and also gave them the reasons why, but they still did not agree. In their reply, they still stated that until my financial account with them was settled, then my book would not go into production yet.
I then decided to contact a lawyer, because according to the contract, I knew that I was 100% right. I started searching on the internet for law firms in the same US State as the publisher and I found quite a few. I did not have very much money, so I thought that I would ask one of these law firms to view the facts and then represent me for a fairly large percentage of the winning cash settlement from the publisher from my 'breach of contract' lawsuit against them. At that point, I still wanted my book to be printed and made available for sale, I really needed to get my story out there and for prople to read it, so I decided to give the publisher one last chance. I sent an email to them explaining that I was about to take them to court for breach of contract and as an amputee and invalid now in a foreign country, I knew that I could get millions of dollars from them, not only from the breach of contract, but I would also be awarded more on the sympathy angle.
The publisher replied quite quickly this time, they stated in their reply that by special concession from their MD., he had decided that they would accept that my account was balanced now and the first copy of my printed work was already in the mail to me. This reply was written as though they were doing me a favour, when I know in reality, that they knew that I would win any court battle very easily. My first book copy arrived and they placed my book on their website for sale, so I linked my main book page on my website, to the book ordering page on the publisher's website and felt quite pleased with myself.
So was that the end of the publishing saga? No! more to come tomorrow.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
21 Oct., 2007: Legless in Thailand - Publishing my book - My life!
It took me approximately four years to complete my first manuscript for my book and I eventually managed to finish it to my satisfaction in December 2005. So then the next exercise began, "Okay, you have what you consider a potentially good book, now what do you do?" I have been an electronics/computer engineer for most of my working life and I had absolutely no idea how to go about getting a book published. So I started searching on the internet, because as a website designer/owner, this is what I am most familiar with. The searches turned up many publishers, but when I visited the websites, I found that mostly they were much too expensive for me and did not really give me the information that I needed. I was mistakenly under the apprehension that the writer did not have to pay to get their book published, I thought that you just submitted your completed manuscript to a publisher and if they liked it, they would publish it themselves and make a good profit from a percentage of the sales, HOW WRONG I WAS!!
After approximately four months of searching, trying to do this myself and being disappointed, I eventually found a website that helps new writers to find publishers, agents, etc. So I registered with them and they started sending me interesting leads regularly by email. This was not free, they had a monthly charge of about $5.50 but it was within my budget, even though I now just survived on a small pension brought forward for me by the RAF because of my disability. One of the publishing leads they sent to me looked quite interesting and cheaper than most of the others, but it was in America and they required $299 to start the publishing contract. I eventually raised enough cash to enter into a publishing agreement with them, I chose a typeset and I chose one of their standard covers, because to design a cover of your own, they would charge you a lot more money, which I didn't have. I checked the exchange rate at the time and sent them a cheque for 160 pounds sterling which at the time was equivalent to $315, but I thought "Better to err on the safe side and lose a little money, rather than to have problems later." They accepted the cheque and sent me a signed copy of their legal contract and the publishing process went into operation in June, 2006.
I then felt quite pleased with myself, my book 'Legless in Thailand' an autobiography of my recent life, physical pain, emotional pain, attempted suicides and my living partner's deceit, lies and eventual desertion, was finally going to be printed and maybe people would be interested in my story and I could make some extra money from the sales of my book and start a reasonably normal life again.
In December 2006, I had heard nothing from my publisher since the contract signing in June 2006 and I vaguely remembered from the contract, that the publishers were under obligation to start production of my book within six months of the contract signing. So I sent my publisher an email asking them if the book had gone into production already, as I had already developed my website http://www.reedinter.co.uk ready to start marketing my book when I knew that it was ready for sale. I received a long reply from the publisher, stating that I still owed them money and attached to the email was a statement of account. On the statement it gave the exchange rate of the pound sterling at some ridiculously low figure that the pound had never dropped to, it went on to show bank charges and other various small expences and it showed on paper that I still owed them $45 to balance the account and then production would commence. I immediately flew into a rage, the statement was total bullshit, in fact I had paid them more than enough than was required by the contract, if what they stated was true, then why didn't they contact me six months previously when they first received the cheque? Why did they sign the contract if I still owed money? Why did they wait until I contacted them to query production?
I think that is enough about my past book publishing problems for today, this will be continued tomorrow. Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
20 Oct., 2007: My background in Thailand and getting legless
Although it was the bad treatment of Heather Mills by the media that inspired me to start this weblog, I think that I have spoken enough about Heather for the time being and that I should now start to explain more about myself, because this is my legless weblog. Many things about my life here are explained in my book ‘Legless in Thailand’, but for today I shall try and give a basic overview about my life here in Thailand.
I first came to Thailand in June 1984, I was working for a large UK military electronics company and I was given the responsibility for the project to install an Anti-Aircraft Defence Simulator for the Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF) at Don Muang in Bangkok. The project was eventually successfully completed in January 1985 and after official acceptance by the RTAF Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) I had to return to UK. During the simulator installation, I had met a Thai girl and fell for her, so in 1986 I made the decision to move to Thailand, marry this girl and start a new life. Many things have happened in the intervening years, which I shall not go into here, as this is just a quick précis of my background in Thailand for you. Now to bring you up-to-date: In 2001 I had a very serious motorbike accident in Thailand, I was turning right off a major dual carriageway in Pattaya, when a pick-up truck ran a red light and hit me. I was almost killed, I smashed my pelvis and almost every other bone in my body, I was in a coma for three weeks and I had my left leg below the knee amputated, I also suffered severe brain damage and I lost a lot of my memory. After the accident, the girl that I had built my life and hopes for the future around, left me to find someone else that could more effectively help to fulfill her secret, insatiable quest for money and riches. It was at this point that I started to write my book ‘Legless in Thailand’, I did not initially set out to write a book, but I just found it mentally therapeutic to write down all of the thoughts, feelings and memories, that were driving me gradually more insane on a day to day basis.
I think that is enough about my background, I just thought that it was important for people reading my legless blog to know how a British citizen ended up being legless in Thailand.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
19 Oct., 2007: In Legless Terms
Just because I am now legless, does not mean that I feel sorry for myself, it is just something that I accepted a long time ago and I am sure that Heather Mills feels the same way. The word 'legless' does not offend me, it quite amuses me now and many of my real friends have adopted this word as my nickname now, because of my book title 'Legless in Thailand'. It is the media that are using the term 'legless' derogatory in Heather's case and I think it is disgusting. Had she just been a physically normal person, then the media would have had to try harder to make people think that she is a bad person, where now they are playing on people's subconcious prejudice against physically abnormal people to sensationalise what would otherwise be just a normal marital breakup that thousands of other couples go through.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
17 October, 2007: Heather Mills McCartney - Start of my legless Blog
As an amputee myself with very similar injuries to Heather Mills McCartney, I do have an automatic empathy with her. Luckily, I do not have the celebrity status that she does, so that when I do anything in any situation that would be a standard retort for any normal person, I don't have anyone criticising me and saying "He is only doing that for publicity" or "He is just playing on sympathy because he is legless" or "He is just a 'gold digger' " People around me just accept me as a normal person, legless or not.
Probably because we amputees are in the minority, I have found that the most despicable people that I have ever met in my life, are people with no obvious physical defects at all, but quite obviously have huge defects in their brain department, just like the people who make these crazy unfounded allegations and stupid comments against Heather.
Well for my first input to this page, I think that is quite enough for now. If anyone has any comments on this page, please feel free to email me at: blog@leglessinthailand.com
Legless in Thailand
To my Legless Headquarters site
P.S. "I don't remember reading the small print when I signed on for this life, in fact, I don't remember signing on at all, I was probably legless then too! So seeing as you wont let me resign, can we renegotiate the contract please?"
My first published book - Legless in Thailand
My other blog at the St Helens Star newpaper, UK
My home town St Helens, UK and their famous rugby team
Some of my short stories HERE
Biography of author John McMiken
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